Judit E. Puskas, Ph. D., P. Eng, Distinguished Professor
Member, National Academy of Engineering
AIMBE, IUPAC and NAI Fellow
External member, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Co-inventor of the polymer coating on the Taxus drug-eluting coronary stent, implanted in over 10 million people
Winner of the 2017 Charles Goodyear Medal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodyear_Medal
Dr. Puskas received a PhD in plastics and rubber technology in 1985, and an M. E. Sc in organic and biochemical engineering in 1977, from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. Her advisors were Professors Ferenc Tüdös and Tibor Kelen of Hungary, and Professor Joseph P. Kennedy at the University of Akron, Ohio, USA, in the framework of collaboration between the National Science Foundation of the USA and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She started her academic career in 1996. Before that she was involved in polymer research and development in the microelectronic, paint and rubber industries. Her present interests include the integration of breast reconstruction and cancer research, green polymer chemistry, biomimetic processes and biomaterials, living/controlled polymerizations, polymerization mechanisms and kinetics, thermoplastic elastomers and polymer structure/property relationships, and probing the polymer-bio interface. She was Associate Editor of the Interdisciplinary Reviews in Nanomedicine and NanoBiotechnology WIRE, Published by Wiley-Blackwell, member of the Advisory Board of the European Polymer Journal and one of the two regional Editors with the highest citation index. She was also member of the IUPAC Working Party IV.2.1 "Structure-property relationships of commercial polymers". Puskas has been published in more than 430 publications, including technical reports, is an inventor or co-inventor of 33 U.S. patents and applications, and has been Chair or organizer of a number of international conferences. Puskas has been awarded her first NIH grant (the first ever in the Department of Polymer Science) in 2010, and has had 8 NSF Grants since 2005, including a Special Creativity Extension in 2013. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 1999 PEO (Professional Engineers of Ontario, Canada) Medal in Research&Development, a 2000 Premier's Research Excellence Award, the 2004 Mercator Professorship Award from the DFG (German Research Foundation), the LANXESS (previously Bayer) Industrial Chair 1998-2008, and the 2009 “Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers” Award of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society, the Woman of Achievement Award, the Arpad Medal from the Arpad Academy of the American Hungarian Association and she was finalist for the Athena Awards. She was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering AIMBE in 2011, and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry IUPAC in 2013. In 2012 she was one of the five winners of the GE Healthymagination Breast Cancer Challenge Award, selected from 400 international applications. Her research is now focusing on the integration of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment with breast reconstruction. She and her business partners received a Phase II SBIR grant from NSF to demonstrate the effectiveness of her polymeric diagnostic agents, in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic. Her Center of Advanced Elastomers for Healthcare, supported by the Rubber Division of ACS and the Breast Cancer Innovation Foundation, also received an NSF grant helping her commercialization efforts. At OSU she received an Accelerator Award for commercialization of a COVID mask. Professor Puskas has raised over $4 million for research in Canada, and over $10 million while at the University of Akron. As a coinventor of the polymer used on the Taxus® coronary stent, Puskas helped the University of Akron generate more than $5 million in license fees.
Professor Puskas is the winner of the 2017 Charles Goodyear Medal, the most prestigious award given by the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society.
She joined the Faculty of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering (FABE) at the Ohio State University as a tenured Full Professor in January 1, 2019, and became a Distinguished Professor in 2020. In 2023 she was elected to be a member in the National Academy of Engineering and received an Honorary Doctorate degree (Doctor Honoris Causa) from the West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin, Poland.